Happy
Heart
“Similarly,
the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only
shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and
abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
Annie
Dillard (The Writing Life)
As eBay sellers, who are
always shopping estate sales, and yard sales, we run into the
hoarding world. It is always shocking no matter how often you see it.
Shocking and so, so sad. It is as though that person has been trying
all their life to find the one thing that will fill the gaping hole
in their soul, and, not finding it in the material world, they keep searching. We have been in houses, large houses, stacked floor to
ceiling with everything imaginable; every room, basement, garage,
attic, until all that remains is a narrow tunnel. Beyond the house,
there are typically multiple storage units similarly stuffed. It's a
heartbreaking thing to see.
Some of us don't hoard
things, but we hoard our time, our knowledge, our lifetime of
learning. Those privileged enough to have been afforded an education,
and beyond an education, the leisure of learning whatever we want to
learn, have an obligation to give back in some way to society. Like
every other species on this planet, we are offered a breadth of
possibilities for contributing. There are no ants in a mound who do
not have a job to do, no bees in a hive who sit idly and sip nectar
while the others work their wings to the nub to provide it. Every
human being, unless they are physically or mentally incapacitated,
has something of value to share.
A life lived in service
to oneself is a sad and lonely life. Annie Dillard writes that a life
devoted to pleasing the senses requires more and more to satisfy it,
like the hoarder's house. By contrast, “The life of the spirit
requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.”
Giving away a little of what we have been afforded creates more, not
less, abundance. The greatest gift is a happy heart. We feel good
about ourselves when we are able to teach what we know, share what we
have, and make our life count for something beyond ourselves.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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